Monday, December 24, 2012

I like Christmas. I always have. Wherever I have been and whoever I have celebrated it with I have always found an atmosphere of genuine goodwill, happiness and the desire for peace. My good fortune, no doubt. Others will have less happy experiences to tell of, but for me Christmas brings the expectation of human warmth in the depth of winter, and as such I look forward to it and enjoy it like a child.

So whether you will be celebrating the birth of Christ, just having a day off with your family around you, or quaffing Scotch and muttering 'bah, humbug' to yourself and random passer-by, I wish you the very best, and I hope you will enjoy these days as I intend to.

To help the enjoyment along I offer a selection of songs about Him who will be born this night. First a confused attempt to reconcile faith with alcoholism, resulting in a sore head and increased existential angst.

Then, on a happier note, we have Bobby Bare with the definitive Christian football waltz (a limited genre, but a fine one nonetheless) requesting that Jesus 'drop kick him through the goalposts of life

And finally, Terry Allen picks up a divine hitchhiker late one night. As they say in Hollywood, it doesn't turn out as planned... The line at 3:18 is a classic that still makes me laugh out loud.

Hope you enjoyed that. Once again to all who have taken time to read any of my ramblings, and especially to those who have commented on them, all the best for a very Happy Christmas.

Saturday, December 22, 2012

Up to the minute as
ever, I’ve been wondering about the enquiry into the deaths at Hillsborough stadium
in 1989, and the context in which it happened. To pick the enquiry and the
report to bits would take a great deal of time and effort, so it’s a good thing
for me that it isn’t my intention to do it. It would be both lazy and cynical to
think that, just as at the time, and in the prevailing mood, it was easiest to
blame the fans, now, when the public mood has changed, and everyone in a
position of responsibility that day is dead or retired, it is easiest to blame
the police. Lazy, cynical and possible false.

It is likely that none of those who died that day were
directly responsible for the events that led to their deaths. It is not my
intention to suggest otherwise. But one day it was going to happen, because of
the culture in which football was played, and to a certain extent still is.

Football fans had for decades been accustomed to behaving
like animals. The more they behaved like animals, the more they were treated
like animals, and the more they were treated like animals, the more they
behaved like animals.

I used to go to Highbury in the mid-eighties, and I saw the
fans herded like wild dogs from the station to the ground, between lines of
police, screaming abuse and making threatening gestures at passers-by. I saw
them howling like crazed apes at opposing players, opposing fans, and each
other, even when not much was happening. We ignored the lines and walked like
human beings towards the gate, were greeted with a ‘good afternoon, sir’, which
we returned, showed out tickets, allowed ourselves to be apologised to for
having our pockets patted, and were invited to go in and enjoy the game. The
police took no notice of us. Because we did not invite them to treat us as
animals.

The cages that caused the deaths at Hillsborough were still there
in part as a result of the brutish, sub-human thuggery of Liverpool fans at the
Heysel stadium in 1985, who caused the deaths of 39 Italian fans simply because
they realized that they could.

The decision to open the gate at Hillsborough was taken by
the police to prevent a mob forming outside the ground, because they knew very
well what a mob like that was capable of. I repeat, one day it was going to
happen. In this the clubs and the league are no different from the trades’
unions and other organizations that call violent gangs out onto the streets in
the knowledge that there will be trouble, and then wash their hands and pretend
it’s someone else’s problem.

It should have been dealt with decades before. Grounds
should have been shut, points deducted, clubs relegated even, when the fans
didn’t behave. It would have meant legal battles, some clubs, the unlucky ones
or those that didn’t take their responsibilities seriously, would have gone to
the wall, the press and the public would have been against them, calling it an
over-reaction. It would have taken courage, political and commercial courage, which
is why the politicians and the FA were never going to do it.

I’m a teacher, and perhaps I see things differently from
many people, but the idea of treating people as inhuman, even when that is how
they see themselves, is disagreeable to me. The intention should have been to
rescue the humanity of the fans, from themselves, rather than accept them at
their own estimation, as wild animals. Football could have become what other
sports are, entertainment, fun, rather than tribal warfare.

Tuesday, December 18, 2012

We use force all the time. We shout others down, we
intimidate and cow them, we create authority for ourselves and exploit it. We
take advantage of our size, strength, intelligence, obnoxiousness or whatever.
It’s how we get on in the world. It’s how the world works. It’s how we are here
at all. If we can’t do it we pretend that it’s a bad thing and try to get
others to stop doing it. But we try to place limits on our use of force, and to
reach collective agreement about how it can and cannot be used.

In Britain, and to a certain extent in these countries
mentioned, and to a much greater extent in many of the miserable polities that
still exist around the world, our freedom of ideas and expression are at the
mercy and whim of others. In many places those in power will simply decide a
posterior if they will let us get away with something or not, a decision which
will depend on how they consider it might affect the solidity of their power.
In Britain it will depend on the current interests of politicians, the need to
hide something else, the desire to make an example, simple stupidity, and, of
course, the size of the hysteria whipped up by the press for its own ends.

We should not imagine we have any solid defence against an
accusation for something we said. The law does not protect us, and is not
intended to protect us, not in Britain. It is intended to be flexible. Indeed,
not just flexible but malleable, ductile, and slippery. It cannot be known in
advance who may have to be thrown to the wolves, and who may need to be
appeased, so you can’t tie your hands too much.

The irritating thing about this is that as often as not you
end up defending the right of a bunch of shits to show themselves for what they
are. But that is the price of freedom. You have to let other people have it,
too.

Freedom of thought, opinion and speech are not the natural
state of man. Our instinct is to prevent people from doing things we don’t like
or understand, or from saying things we don’t want to hear. The fact that it is
better for all of us to let the people we don’t want to hear speak, is a lesson
learned slowly, and only by some of us. Those of us who value the right to have
our own ideas, and not have to hide them from the government, recognise also
that other people must be allowed the same privilege or it can’t function at
all. It takes constant vigilance and constant effort to defend a situation
which some of us understand to be good.

Friday, December 14, 2012

We assume that the law is based on principles that do not
exist, in the sense that they are not generally accepted by society as the
basis of law, and are rarely if ever directly acknowledged in law (the first
amendment to the US Constitution is unusual not only because it exists, but
also because it is still interpreted by courts to mean what it appears to say.
Perhaps because this is so well known in the free world, people in other
countries tend to assume that their governments recognise and respect that
right, and that the law in these areas takes it into account as a basic principle.
Most do no such thing. In Britain there is no such principle governing the law,
and no such principle has ever existed socially or culturally.

The Lisbon Treaty (The EU Constitution forced upon us to
replace the one they couldn’t make us swallow) incorporates the Charter of
Rights of the EU, which says this:

Article 11

Freedom of expression and information

1. Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right
shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and
ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers.

Which seems clear-except the last part- but is routinely
ignored, and is no guarantee of anything.

Which is fine, but has it ever been truly tested? In fact, I
can’t think- offhand- of any case here like those which are regularly
highlighted in England, where people are jailed for making tasteless jokes or
wearing t-shirts or unfashionable opinion on facebook.

The point is that in Spain the principle is recognised in
the Constitution, and is respected by the courts and governments (yes, Lord
Copper, your friend’s qualification is appropriate). While in Britain there is
no law and no social agreement on the matter, and the EU despises freedom and
ignores its own rules on the subject.

Having said that, one of the things I often argue about with
people here is the illegalization of the Basque separatist party Herri
Batasuna/Euskal Herritarok/Batasuna. They are, more or less, the Sinn Fein of
the Basque Country (except that it has always seemed to me that Adams and co.
are the dog, whereas Batasuna are the tail). This group is, among other things,
the voice of Eta, and most of its leaders, and quite a few of its supporters, clearly
take pleasure in the murder of innocent people that is done in the name of
their ideas. But it is the murderers you lock up, and possibly those who
deliberately make the murders possible, but not those who support their ideas
without committing crimes. Left-wing supporters of Basque independence, even those who treat the lives of their opponents with contempt, are
entitled to hold, express and defend their opinions, to associate with others
who share them, vote for representatives who share them and attempt to persuade
others to share them, as is anyone else.

When I am supreme ruler and universal tyrant, there will be no freedom but mine, because I shan't need other people's freedom. Until that moment arrives, I will defend their freedom as I defend my own, because their freedom is my freedom.

Wednesday, December 12, 2012

A word that is thrown around freely by anyone who thinks,
suspects or wishes that someone else should be taken seriously. Most people
seem to use it of those who appear on TV and give their opinions without
swearing or stabbing their finger in anyone’s eye. A more robust characteristic
is that they are people who can introduce into debate ideas that have not been
prominent in the popular press in the previous 48 hours. When used carefully,
the term is applied to people employed in non-technical areas of academia, and
to those who work in the arts in almost any capacity.

Those who analyse these things more closely tend to describe
an intellectual as someone who deals with ideas as such, rather than with the
practical consequences of ideas. Mathematicians, engineers and so on, whose
intellectual formation and the concepts they use in their work involve a higher
level of understanding and rigour than most TV pundits have, are not generally
considered intellectuals. Philosophers (itself a very broad concept), high-brow
critics, and the more analytic members of the arts fraternity, on the other
hand, do not get their hands dirty, are not concerned with the reality derived
from the ideas whose existence they affirm, turning them over in their fingers
and pronouncing authoritatively, dogmatically even, on what they should
mean.

Fair enough, I’m not going to claim that the word must only
be used to mean what I think it should mean. The problem comes from the fact
that the greatest intellects in the world today, those whose enquiries, in many
different fields, have made, or could make, the greatest difference to human
understanding, including of itself and its society, are unknown to the general
public (in which I include the popular press) and their contributions to
thought and knowledge are neither known nor understood.

It may be said, quite fairly, that it requires no
explanation to understand that an engine works or a bridge stays up, while to
appreciate the purpose of an abstract idea requires more than observation. On
the other hand, mathematicians don’t seem to count as intellectuals, although
there are few disciplines more abstract than mathematics. (In the interests of
full disclosure, I used to be a mathematician).

At the most basic level of selling advertising, the press
requires ‘intellectuals’ to give some impression of seriousness to their own
opinions, but they need something that is easy to understand and that will
resonate with the readership, or they will lose them. Thus, real intellectuals
are not a lot of use. Or rather, those who are not able to speak so that normal
people can understand and be interested by them are not a lot of use.

Why then do we expect the kind of people who are thought of
as intellectuals to explain practical things about politics? Or do we want them
only to tell us how to feel good about ourselves because we believe the right
things and others don’t, and then everything will come right by magic?

Of course, what I’m looking for is a definition of
intellectual which will clearly include me, but, even when I make the rules,
I’m having trouble doing it.

Monday, December 10, 2012

My grandfather remembered the first moon landing. It wasn’t
so long ago, you know. He died in a hospital bed, and my mother was with him.
He didn’t know she was there, and it was only chance. It could have been any
one of us. We took turns. The last one of us he knew was there was probably me.
When my mother arrived he was already unconscious.

He never talked about the moon landing. Only a couple of
times on New Year’s Eve when he’d been mixing his Guinness with my
grandmother’s sherry. My mother said he used to talk about it a lot. When they
thought it was a great moment in the history of the world. They thought the
moon was the future. It wasn’t their fault. To them it was mysterious. And any
mystery must be important. They thought you should die with your family around
you. There used to be tribes that ate the bodies of their parents. They thought
there was a reason for it.

Then we discovered what the moon was for. It’s hard. A part
of you wants to say goodbye, and then, when it’s your turn, you don’t want to
go. You cling to the old ways, the old ideas, the things our grandparents
believed. It’s easy to understand why they believed them, but now we know they
were wrong, and you have to accept it. It’s part of being a person of your
time. We know what they didn’t. We know more about how things should be. To
reject it is to belong to another time, to live with the dinosaurs. Oh, and to
be wrong, of course.

The moon is dead. Geologically and biologically dead. No
atmosphere, like a really bad party. It was obvious really. We just took a long
time to realize. The Earth, on the contrary, is young. And the world belongs to
the young. It’s obvious, really.

There are those who whisper that there’s been a
misunderstanding, that the world belongs not to the young, but to the living.
There was a time when it was like that, but as everyone knows, it was just a
step on the way, a short period while the forces of reaction and sedition got
used to the idea or were made to stop confusing the matter. Then it was the
dying who were sent here as well as the dead. Then the old, over 80 they
started with. But old age is a relative thing. A few people are still young at
90, some are old at 60. It was a matter of judgement. The people who did the
judging were often criticised, so in the end they made it simpler. Over 60,
because some are old at 60. Those who were still young at 60 had the chance to
prove it, and it turned out that most of them were not as young as they
thought. The world belongs to the young.

Some of those who came here were not even 60, but age is
relative. When you have nothing to offer your family, and no friends to help
you, and you’re more a hindrance than a help, and your company is boring, and
you smell a bit and talk too much about the past, then you’re old, aren’t you,
regardless of the years you’ve lived? And now it’s my turn.

I made it to 58 before they decided I had to go. Not bad
really. I can’t complain. I had a good family, but my friends were sent off
first, my wife never even made it here, and my children feel that I can’t make
proper use of my property anymore, not as much as they could, so they asked the
tribunal to review me. All fair and right, just as it should be. But it’s Hell
here. Completely alone. The workers receive you, process you, then they put you
in your cell and wait for the hunger and thirst to take you. They’re made of
clear plastic, the cells, something incredibly strong and transparent. You can see the sky
and the Earth. It makes you wish you were back there.

I didn’t know it was like that. On Earth we thought there
must be some other way, quick and painless. It’s what they tell you, or what
they let you believe, anyway. Now I think about it, I don’t know that I ever
heard it mentioned. People don’t think about this place, and the people who
come here. We don’t matter anymore, do we? The world isn’t like in my
grandfather’s day, when they thought they could talk to the dead, and visit
them, and ask them to watch over them. Now we know the truth. I’m not one of
them anymore. I’m one of us.

But it’s hard when your time comes, it really is. You want
to stay, you say that you’re still young, that you deserve to stay with the
living. Old people are selfish, we used to say. And it’s true. Now I’m old I’m
selfish myself. I’ll be gone soon. Dead. A few days more, and it will be over.
I already feel weak, and tired, and my mouth is drier than I ever imagined it
could be, and my head hurts terribly. Just a few days more.

The workers have a hard time here. Lonely and miserable,
with no real comforts, and their families and friends, if they still have any,
a quarter of a million miles away. They’re paid a pittance, but it doesn’t
really matter as there’s nothing here they could spend it on. They can’t
produce anything and what we send over from Earth is just the minimum required
to keep them alive. They’re only allowed back occasionally, and briefly, under
supervision, and permissions are often cancelled at the last minute. In fact
hardly anyone on Earth has ever met a moon worker, not until they come here.
It’s odd, in a way. At the time we discovered the purpose of the moon, we
discovered the purpose of the Welsh.

If they knew I was writing this, they would make me lie here
forever, instead of pushing me into space in the direction of Sirius. That’s what
they promise to do, so that one day we’ll wake up on the ancestral home of man.
You have to believe it, or you’d go mad. If you don’t believe it, if you don’t
understand why it’s right, you don’t deserve to go to Sirius, and they just
throw you out into the moondust. I can see a lot of bodies out there, there
must be a lot of people who don’t believe. But I do. I know it’s right. It’s
just a bit hard to take when it’s your turn. A few days more…

Saturday, December 8, 2012

Oh God, here we go again. What is freedom, and why does it
matter? No, stop there. What is freedom? That’s a big enough question on its
own for a Friday afternoon.

Why ‘should’ that bloke be allowed to make bad jokes about a
dead girl? Why ‘should’ that Muslim be allowed to wish that British soldiers
would die and burn in Hell? It is not immediately obvious that it is in our
interests, or in some sense ‘right’, to accept, as a matter of principle, that
others may think and say what they wish.

In any case, ‘accept’ does not mean ‘cravenly refrain from
all reaction’. It means that our reaction should be constrained to expressing
our own thoughts in the matter. We are perfectly entitled, indeed to some
extent we are obliged (with freedom comes responsibility, and that
responsibility can pertain not only to the person who exercises freedom, but
also to the one who allows it to be exercised), to respond to positions and
ideas we disagree with and dislike. We are entitled to attack, dissect, analyse,
dismiss, the position of someone we disagree with, to attempt to prevent others
from being influenced by it and to mitigate the harm we think it might do.

In other words, we are entitled to talk to each other about
our ideas and beliefs, to exchange opinions and to persuade.

Why should we not try to forcibly prevent people from
saying, or believing, things of which we disapprove? There are clearly two
arguments to be made, one moral, one practical. The history of humanity- and
doubtless its future as well- is full of the gruesome wreckage of attempts to
stop people thinking things that somebody doesn’t like. One of the most basic
lessons of history, a lesson still unlearnt by many people, and largely ignored
by those who can obtain power, is that people who are free in a number of
important ways live happier, longer, more satisfactory lives. Deprive them of
that freedom and you deprive them of that happiness, comfort, satisfaction, and
in the end of life itself. Who are you to do that?

Why is it right to shut people up, by force, or more
commonly to bully others into doing it, because we don’t like what they say. It
is very tempting to remove from our presence things we dislike, and so we find
ways to justify doing so. We create notions of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, and we
attribute them to something greater than ourselves, ‘God’ or ‘our humanity’ or
some such thing, to invest them with an authority which we ourselves do not
have. In doing so we are still savages throwing rocks at the neighbours for
coming too close, but more rational, nobler savages.

The freedom of others is our own freedom. If we recognise
and defend the freedoms of others, we expect some kind of reciprocity. If we
recognise and defend the freedoms of people we dislike to do things we disapprove
of, we place a value of that freedom which is more than the value we can obtain
from it, we state that it has intrinsic value greater than, independent of, the
benefit we, personally, may extract from it.

On the other hand, stopping people from hearing something
someone says, by force or abuse of authority, is not considered good by those
who believe in freedom.

If we like the rule of law, and it seems to be good thing,
there needs to be clarity in definition and interpretation. Many people will disagree
about what a specific law should say, but on the whole we like them to exist.
They keep other people in check, and we know what consequences our actions are
likely to have. (Legal consequences. I assume we are sufficiently socially
competent to know how people around us might react to the things we say and do.
They are also likely to be limited, whereas the state has long arms, great
patience and a thirst for blood.)

Thursday, December 6, 2012

Does the world need another amateurish review of Atlas
Shrugged? Why try to write a review of a book that has already been examined
from every possible political, literature, personal and critical perspective?
Why write about a book that is of no interest to anyone who hasn’t already
heard about it? Er, because I'm a blogger with nothing better to do just now. Not a good reason, I know, but it'll have to do.

Anyone who hangs around libertarian blogs hears references
to John Galt, Ayn Rand, and the book. There comes a point where you think you
might as well read it, rather than take your opinion of it from anyone who
happens to comment on someone else’s blogpost.

Firstly, it is a very long and boring book. Very long
indeed, and extremely dull much of the time. There is no real story,
everything, every character, every conversation, every event, is driven by the
need to make a particular statement, or to allow something to happen. As
literature it is pretty much worthless. I don’t think it ever aspired to
literature.*

It does, however, articulate its ideas very well. It is a
refreshing, uplifting, dynamic read, reminding you constantly of how those with
small minds and hearts drag down those who might contribute, albeit by chance,
to the greater benefit of mankind.

The great problem of life is always other people. The
leeches and moochers of Atlas Shrugged are a caricature, but they represent
deeply influential currents of belief in most developed countries today. It is
hard for many to understand that ‘sharing the wealth’, ‘sharing the jobs’, however
good and just this sounds, requires that someone create the resources we are
all going to share. If those who are capable of doing it don’t get the biggest
share, or at least, if they are given no hope of getting a significant share,
they simply won’t do it. And there is nothing to share out, fairly or otherwise.
Wealth does not grow on trees and when the usual people stop its creation they
look around desperately, wondering where it’s gone. The answer is that it was
never there. They refused to let it exist, and they can’t make it themselves.

I say it is refreshing and uplifting even though it offers
no solution to the problem. The book’s response to the situation is so
fantastic as to be inconceivable. It wouldn’t work, even if it were put into
practice. After all, in those countries where creators of wealth are not
allowed to exist, they are still blamed for the resulting poverty. Even so
improbable a strike as Ayn Rand describes would not change the minds of those
who don’t want to see. In the current economic crisis, governments, with the
help of the press, have successfully sold the myth that there isn’t any money
because the banks have taken it all.

No, the book is refreshing and uplifting because it repeats,
relentlessly and unapologetically, the message that some people create wealth,
while others only consume it. The creators of wealth do not have to exist. In a
sufficiently large and free society they will probably exist if they are
allowed to. But it is a matter of chance.

*Years ago I read ‘We, the Living’. I read it as a novel, a
literary novel, before I knew that Ayn Rand had any greater significance to
some people than that of a writer who had lived the hell that was Stalinist
Russia and could articulate the horror dramatically and poetically. I remember
it as a novel that was good on its own terms, a story well told, regardless of
the background which was, I now realize, the main reason for writing it.

I have also just read ‘The Anthem’, which has a political and
philosophical message. The book is mostly that message, but it is told through
a story, a genuine literary creation. It’s short, and worth reading for what it
is.

Tuesday, December 4, 2012

I shall fight the urge to comment on the award of the Nobel
Peace Prize to the EU. I doubt there is much I can add that hasn’t been said
(not that that usually stops me, but I shall resist the urge*). But I will ask,
and completely fail to answer, a question ignored by the process, though not
perhaps by Nobel himself, who essayed a form of answer: how do you contribute
to world peace in any way that could mark you out for recognition or awards?

“…one part to the person who shall have done the most or
the best work for fraternity between nations, the abolition or reduction of
standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.”

I have long wondered what Nobel meant by ‘peace conferences’.
It is probable that he lived in a world very different from our own, and it was
possible to imagine that if leaders of nations, or their favoured officials,
could be persuaded to sit down together, peace would result from it. Despite
the incompetence and corruption of that perpetual peace congress that is the
UN, despite the failure of NATO, the EU and similar organizations to keep
absolute peace in the areas they try to control, despite the abject failure of
many meetings convened for the specific purpose of ending or averting conflict,
the fact is that at least they exist, to an extent perhaps unimaginable a
century ago, and that a significant number of people cannot conceive of a war
breaking out in the country they live in, suggests that things have improved in
the presence of such congresses.

Economic growth and the material comfort it brings are
undoubtedly important as well, as is a fair bit of luck, but I think our
Alfred, casting an eye about him today, would be fairly happy that he had identified
a way of bringing some improvement to the world in general.

The abolition of reduction of standing armies is a trickier
matter. The negotiated death of the arms race, and the subsequent ending of the
Cold War, certainly made the world in general a much more peaceful place, and I
think Nobel would consider this within the scope of ‘reducing standing armies
(not that those responsible for it were ever recognised by the Nobel Committee).
So one up to Sir Alfred.

The dissolution of the Japanese and German armies after WWII
led to unprecedented peace in Western Europe and the Far East, but it was an
expression of the desire of those countries and their peoples (in the case of
Germany at least) not to start further conflict on the scale they had previously
been responsible for. The reduction in the standing army was a consequence of
the fervent desire for peace, not the direct cause of peace. A scoreless draw
there, I think.

And then there is the contribution of armies to peace, something
which Nobel could probably not imagine. The idea that armies could prevent
conflict rather than be the cause of it by their very existence is unlikely to
have entered his head, as it was obviously indisputable at the time that war
was caused by armies. I might be misjudging the times, not being remotely
expert, but I assume the thought process was something like that. Now an Army,
in the sense of a body of men trained and disciplined for certain rôles
requiring controlled authority, can contribute to the peace of their own or
more frequently other nations.

And then there is the Fraternity between Nations. Hard to
define, harder to quantify, but how would you work to achieve fraternity among
nations? Much as I hate to admit it, we have to let the governments help us out
on this one, not because they are likely to be any good at it, but because they
can very easily stop it happening. The global trade, comfortable lives (in some
countries at least) and cheap travel that freedom and stability have brought
about lead to an increase in understanding and knowledge about people who are
not quite like us, and a (slightly) reduced desire to kill each other
unthinkingly.

Governments, the press, others with a voice and some kind of
control can very easily persuade us (for some value of us) to hate some given
‘them’, and frequently find it useful to do so. They have a harder time
persuading us to like ‘them’, usually having to resort to abuse and the law. In
fact, you would think from reading the papers that no one would like anyone at
all if we weren’t forced by law to pretend that we do.

But the fact is the more we travel, the more we surf the
internet, the more we expose ourselves to news, entertainment, food and other
artefacts of culture from around the world, the fewer the obstacles to that
fraternity which Nobel wanted. There is surely a case for awarding the prize to
Bill Gates, Tim Berners-Lee, Freddy Laker, Michael Ryan, or some combination of
little-known people who have made communication around the world so much
easier. Or from a slightly broader perspective, to the world’s major banks,
which have, over the last century, made investment easy, with the result that
we have the prosperity that has allowed bars to fraternity to be broken down. A
serious suggestion, though perhaps not a popular one.

It has often been observed that free, wealthy countries don’t
go to war with each other. To bring about peace and fraternity we should try to
bring about freedom and prosperity. We know now how to do that, although there
are many who don’t want it to happen.

*In consequence of which the whole of paragraphs 2 and 3,
much of paragraphs 4 and 6, and quite a lot of the introduction, have been
struck out.

Sunday, December 2, 2012

There is a bar in Córdoba which is like Heraclitus’ river.
Or rather perhaps, like all rivers as described by Heraclitus. You can never, strictly speaking, visit it twice.

I live in a town not so far away, and I have been there many
times. It’s not a disco or a jazz club. It isn’t filled with drunks with smelly
armpits crying in their beer, or prostitutes pretending to be something else.
It doesn’t smell of overused oil and there is never football on the television.
It provides food but only symbolically, for show rather than nutrition. It
serves coffee in the mornings, wine at midday and strong liquor in many colours
at night. It always smells clean and slightly evocative. We might call it a
cocktail bar. It is many things, but it is never any of the things you expect a
bar to be.

You can hear the music, but you can hear yourself speak as
well. You don’t have to dress up to go there, but you do anyway because if you
didn’t it would be like going anywhere else. The lighting is sufficient to see the
beauty of the women, but too dim to show their flaws. They serve beer, but only
out of bottles, and no one would dare drink it after nine in the evening.

Despite being recognisably the same place, and retaining a
very distinct feel, which is what takes me back again and again, every time you
go there it has changed. The art discreetly hanging on the walls, the tone of
the ceiling, the play of the lights on the walls, the nap of the light rugs, the
refined shoots of Brazilian bamboo or bonsai behind the bar and in the alcoves,
are different. The faces are not the ones you remember. Their clothing changes only
slowly, with the seasons, with the fashions, but the people are never the same.
The music is always exactly suited to your mood, but you only notice when you
hear it that your mood has changed since you were last there, and so has the
music.

The barman remembers you, of course, and he knows what you
want before you order it. Which is odd, because I’d swear he’s not the same one
as last time…

Saturday, December 1, 2012

The press like to think they are special, that they
safeguard democracy, that they have specific rights and freedoms that set them
apart from ‘ordinary people.’ The government is looking for ways to control the
press, and ‘abuse’ is a good excuse to do it. They could just the laws they’ve
already made, but apparently that isn’t enough.

That they are so looking is clear, I think. The Internet frightens
them because it gives enormous power to people who are not themselves.

The freedom of the press is the freedom of all of us. Not
because they use it well, in the interests of public freedom. They do nothing
of the kind. Newspapers and broadcasters are large, often international
corporations who want to make money, like anyone else. Journalists have a
living to earn and frequently an ego to stoke. The way to make money from
journalism is, as with any other business, to find a market and give it what it
wants. This may mean sex and celebrities, turgid book reviews, fluffy tales of
the columnists daily life pretending to be news, ill-informed ranting disguised
as background or comment, support for one or other powerful interest, pictures
of the footy, or even intelligent, well-researched stuff about things that actually
matter. The point is that the customer does not demand truth, and so the seller
has no interest in providing it.

There is a myth that the practice of journalism in the US is
protected by the First Amendment. This is a myth that Hollywood is quite happy
to perpetuate. (In Hollywood land journalists are always good and brave, while
pharmaceutical companies are always evil. I wonder why this might be.) At the
time that Amendment was passed the press as we know it did not exist. The text was
intended to specifically extend the protection of speech to the printed word.
It does not make journalists special.

It’s important to the rest of us that journalists, the press
in general, have no more nor less
freedom than the rest of us, because they are the rest of us. We are all free
to write about the world and the people around us, or anything else we choose.
In Britain and other civilized countries we still are free to do it. A
journalist is surely nothing more than someone who thinks of himself as one.
There are plenty of people who call themselves journalists but only ever give
their own opinions, or restrict their output to material that is not, by any
definition, news. Likewise, many people who provide genuine, researched news
stories, many bloggers, for example, do not think of themselves as journalists,
and are not recognised as such by others.

A journalist, I suspect, is someone who is paid by a (large)
media company to produce content for it. This has nothing to do with the public
interest, freedom or anything else. The fact that the government would rather
like to control them (and Cameron’s spokesmen are denying it, which tells you
all you need to know), combined with the fact that they themselves would like
to control those who are not them, suggests that this is just more power games,
politicians and big business arm wrestling over who gets what part of our
money.

The danger is not from a mild regulation of the press, but
from the inevitable trade-off, the distinction between what ‘licensed’ journalists
are allowed to do, and what the plebs are permitted.* The freedom of the press
is our freedom, not because they defend us, but because it allows us to defend
ourselves.

*There seems to be some semi-legal protection for ‘official’
journalists who refuse to disclose the sources of their information. The rest
of us do not have that privilege. We don’t want the gulf to widen.